


Paved with Good Intentions

by Lyrstzha



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Action/Adventure, Multi, Plotty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2006-05-03
Updated: 2006-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/pseuds/Lyrstzha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willow's slayer-activation spell turns out to have unexpectedly disastrous consequences for the whole slayer line, and to make matters worse, Giles is beginning to think that Angel may have lost his soul again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Storm Warnings

**Author's Note:**

> Set post "Chosen" but before "Not Fade Away". This series stars off as plotty gen, but includes slash, het, and femslash in later chapters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gen in this chapter.

Giles eyed the overcrowded and slightly bowed cheap plywood shelves that lined his small office dubiously, and didn't even attempt to re-shelve the heavy book he'd been perusing. Instead he perched it precariously on top of one of the slightly listing towers of papers and other books that seemed to be trying to wall him in behind his overloaded desk.

He turned back to his computer, which sat smugly in the only non-cluttered space on his desk. He gazed at his monitor with ill-concealed loathing. He reached out a wary finger to click his mouse on the 'play' button with his usual sense of deep suspicion. As usual, his machine failed to justify his trepidation by exploding, and chose instead to mock him with flawless obedience. Really, he was certain that the thing was snickering at him under the soft whirr of its cooling fan.

The entire scene played out for him again, the last of countless repetitions over the past few hours. It made him no less uneasy this time. He watched, apparently through the glass of an office window, as Angel menaced his own staff. Giles frowned as he saw Angel take the green one hostage again. Giles knew Wesley and Spike well enough to recognize the looks of grim determination they both wore at this point in the playback. As the segment ended, the camera zoomed in on Wesley's face. A small, ominous caption appeared beneath it: 'Get him out before it's too late.' The screen froze there, and Giles stared at it intently for a moment longer, but it still made itself no more clear than it had each time before. He shot his phone a glance, and visibly steeled himself before picking it back up and pressing a number on speed-dial.

"Mr. Giles? Is something wrong? Not that you can't call without something being wrong. Because you totally can. As a fellow warrior in the fight against the evil forces of darkness, you're welcome to call on me at any time to share the weighty burdens of—"

"_Andrew_," Giles managed between gritted teeth. "Something may, in fact, possibly be wrong."

"Besides...?" Andrew trailed off delicately, reminding Giles that living with Buffy probably made tact on that particular subject a necessary instinct.

"Yes. Besides the usual, which is still going no better." Giles sighed and brushed several of the piles on his desk with distracted fingers before he went on. "I had Willow set all the official email addresses of the old Watcher's Council to be forwarded to my own. This afternoon someone sent a video file to the old email address for Augustus Weatherby, the Director of Field Operations for the former Council." Giles paused to catch his breath, though he had a feeling he'd regret it.

"Director of Field Operations? That's got a whole James Bond vibe going. Can we have one of those in the new Council?"

Giles closed his eyes and rubbed his left temple with his free hand. "Perhaps later. Right now we need to be more concerned with this video. It appears from its contents that my surmise about Angel was correct."

"You are wise in the ways of the dark side, Obi-Wan." A shadow of wistfulness colored Andrew's voice. "But you're sure? He didn't seem so evil when I saw him. Moody, maybe, but not so much with the rip-off-your-head-and-use-your-skull-as-a-candy-dish sort of thing."

"I'm not absolutely certain yet. This evidence cannot be taken as completely trustworthy, given that I don't know who sent it, beyond that the person or persons unknown seem to have a keen interest in Wesley Wyndham-Price. I've gotten all that I'm going to get out of this infernal machine. I was hoping that you might be able to make some headway on that front."

"Sure, I can have a look at it, but...why don't we just call one of the other members of Angel's team? We could just _ask_ them if Angel's all evil vampyre again."

"I did consider that, Andrew." Giles's tone carried a hint of reproach. "However, given that my few contacts in L.A. have confirmed that Angel has recently been seen buying spell components that could well be used in glamour and mind control spells, I'm not wholly sanguine about the testimony of anyone near him."

Andrew's voice went very small. "Oh. That's not so much of the good, is it?"

Even under the circumstances, Giles felt a small, wry grin twisting one corner of his mouth. "No. Also, I fear that living with Dawn and Buffy may well be taking a toll upon on your verbal skills, such as they were."

Before Andrew could do more than draw in an indignant-sounding breath, the shrill sound of feminine shrieks cut across the line. They built by the instant towards a strident crescendo.

Andrew cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. "Um. Let me just close the door..."

Giles frowned. The closed door did not appear to dampen the yelling all that much, at least not from his own end. "Andrew, whatever are they fighting about _this_ time?"

There was a long sigh from the other end of the line. "They aren't fighting about what they're fighting about. They never do. I think this time it goes under the pretense of who ate the last of the gelato." Giles could almost hear a shrug. "If you ask me, it's got a lot more to do with those reports about the dead pregnant women. I saw Buffy re-reading them this morning." Andrew paused as the screeching racket on his side of the line was punctuated with two loud slams. "It's getting worse between them. Maybe it'd help if you let me _tell_ Buffy about—"

"_No_. Angel, as far as we know, is working for the enemy. He may have brought the medallion to Spike on their instructions. You told me yourself that the office gossip you picked up at Wolfram and Hart while you were there maintained that Spike was bound by it after his return. Perhaps that was their intention all along. And even if it was not, Spike has remained at Angel's side even after being freed of the medallion's _overt_ control. We have to assume that Spike may no longer be in command of his own faculties. It may even be true that his resurrection did not include his soul." Giles paused in his tirade to cast about for more words, but he wasn't fast enough.

"But I talked to him, Mr. Giles. He was still _Spike_." Andrew's tone turned misty around the edges. "He was still the great, martyred champion of the innocent, carrying the burdens of justice on his broad shoulders, swooping in like an avatar of—"

"_Andrew_. We cannot be sure yet. Buffy's judgment where Spike is concerned was impaired enough before he sacrificed himself for her. Given how vulnerable she is right now, after everything that we've been dealing with, I don't imagine she'd show any caution whatsoever. Compound that with the possible return of Angelus, and it could very well spell disaster. We are _not_ going to tell her anything until we know exactly what is going on."

They shared a sigh. "She's going to be really, really pissed that we didn't tell her when she does find out, you know," Andrew offered in a small voice.

"I know. But after all that she's suffered, I can't let this happen to her again. Especially not now." Because even after all these years and a warehouse full of slayers, Buffy was still his true magnetic north, even if the time when he could tell her that seemed to have passed.

"All right. I won't say anything to her. You have my word as a champion of the light."

Giles rolled his eyes only slightly, because Andrew really was surprisingly useful these days, though this thought was still a little staggering. "And if you speak to Angel or any of his team again, you still cannot say anything about our current problems."

"I won't. Still, unless they're really tied up with their own stuff, I think they'll have noticed."

Giles opened his mouth to explain his thoughts on Angel and obliviousness when a soft knock on his office door brought him back to a sense of urgency about the proceedings. "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Meanwhile, I've forwarded you this video. I think." Giles padded quietly across the wooden floor of his office to open the door as he spoke.

"Okay. I'll call you as soon as I have something on the source. Over and out." Andrew rang off.

Xander stood on the other side of the door, slouched casually with his hands in his pockets. There was a new, easy grace lying beneath the surface of his stance, as if Xander had finally learned to be comfortable in his own skin, that hadn't been there before Africa. It made the sight of him fit strangely in Giles' mind; it felt something like trying to find his way by a familiar landmark only to discover that it had been burned to the ground.

"I was camped out in the lounge talking with Robin and some of the girls. Did you know that a bunch of girls living together will all start...you know, _cycling_," Xander illustrated this with a vague swirling motion of one hand, "at the same time of the month? I knew I should have stayed in Africa an extra week."

Giles stared at him for a moment, completely nonplussed, before taking refuge in some absolutely essential lens polishing. "Er. Yes. Well. I suppose that's to be expected."

Xander grinned at him broadly. "Learn something new everyday, right?" He stepped inside the office and waited for Giles to close the door completely before continuing. "I heard you wanted to see me. What's up?"

Giles waved Xander to one of the light camp chairs that stood beside the battered desk; Giles had had to set the chair around to the side more than a week earlier when he'd realized that he could no longer see his visitors across his desk.

Giles settled into his own chair and leaned forward earnestly. "I realize we've already discussed your mission to Africa in detail, but there are a few questions I'd still like to ask you again."

Xander shrugged easily. "Shoot."

"Are you absolutely certain that Spike's shaman cannot be convinced to restore Angel's soul without Angelus's request? I know you didn't have much time with him due to your main agenda, but if you got any sense at all that he might be persuaded...?"

"Hey, I took a whole week off Slayer hunting to spend with the guy after I finally found him. He said it'd have to be the same way he did it for Spike. Can't shove a soul down his throat. He'd have to swallow it like a good boy." Xander blinked. Giles stared at him again. "Whoa. Um. That didn't sound half so dirty in my head, you know?" Xander paused and obviously tried to re-route his train of thought with a shake of his head. "I could go back and see him again if you want, but I don't think it'd help."

Giles sighed in frustration. "No, no. I need you elsewhere right now."

Xander frowned at Giles. "What is it?"

Giles opened his arms wide to include the paper jungle that engulfed his desk. "More of the same. Pregnant women being kicked to death from the inside by abnormally strong fetuses. Little girls cracking the skulls of their playmates open by accident. Sibling spats turning deadly. The occasional gang of young girls going criminally rogue, possibly even as far as Faith once did. And lately, there's a new trend." Giles snatched a newspaper clipping from a pile and brandished it in front of Xander. "Collectors of Slayer blood seem to have discovered how many ignorant, vulnerable, fledgling Slayers are out there."

Xander leaned over the newspaper clipping, reading aloud as the color of his face edged progressively towards green. "Doris Hendricks, aged 87, victim of Alzheimer's...found dead at her nursing home today of apparent exsanguination..." He trailed off and exchanged a haunted look with Giles.

"You don't want to see the one about the three pre-school girls in Madrid who were sacrificed. Slowly."

Xander raised a warding hand towards Giles. "_No_. I really, really don't." He swallowed hard. "Once we find them all—"

Giles cut him off sharply, "We haven't been doing so well at that, have we? I have the coven working full time finding them, but there's more than we ever thought there would be... And what do we do with them when we find them? Take all the small children from their parents? Establish our own nursing home for the aged? Even if we managed that, there would still be the rogues and the unborn. The only way to stop this is to undo what Willow did, or at the very least to put the age range of potentials' activation back between fourteen and twenty."

Xander wearily scrubbed a hand over his good eye, but couldn't seem to find anything to say.

Giles looked down at his desk. Even in the soft light of his desk lamp, the lines on his face stood out more sharply than usual. "The unborn...Xander, if we can't stop this, it will eventually wipe out the Slayer line as surely as the First would have done. From what we can tell, no Slayer has successfully been born since Willow's spell."

Xander leaned further forward to touch the back of Giles's arm where it rested across a book. Giles couldn't help noting that the touch of Xander's comforting hand would once have been a self-conscious, somewhat clumsy clasp, but now it was an easy brush of fingers, support without awkwardness. Somehow this actually unsettled Giles more than Xander's old uncertainty would have; it felt too much like the touch of a stranger to be reassuringly familiar.

Xander patted Giles' arm silently for a moment and obviously cast about for something useful to say. "Speaking of Willow. How's she managing on her end?"

"I spoke to Kennedy earlier this evening to ask if Willow could be brought back. Apparently she's worked herself into another collapse, and has been out for two days. Kennedy doesn't want to move her yet."

Xander tilted his head to the side, his eye narrowing. "Brought back. She might be making some headway out there, and you want her brought back." His tone was flat, and his gaze slid to Giles's monitor, where he could just see the final frozen frame of the video as he leaned forward. His hand withdrew slowly from Giles's arm. His eye returned to Giles, full of speculation and a little accusation, and his tone was full of brittle congeniality. "Something else is up. What's with the questions about Angel's soul?"

Giles sighed. "You may as well know. We think Angelus may have returned. If he has, we may need Willow's help."

Xander surged to his feet, instantly bristling with aggression. "Don't tell me he got his happy on again while we've been out here drowning in guilt. If we could just bottle that psycho's sense of timing and sell it, I could afford to have Bill Gates doing my laundry." He thudded one fist down on top of a pile of books in frustration, and Giles had to throw up a hasty hand to save the stack before it toppled. "This is the _last_ thing Buffy needs right now."

"I agree. Which is exactly why we aren't going to tell her yet. We're also not going to tell her that he appears to have resurrected Spike, and may be holding him in thrall."

Xander boggled almost comically. "He _what_? When did all this happen, anyway?"

"A few months ago. Andrew and I have been monitoring the situation, but we're not certain yet if—"

"A _few months_? Dead Boy may have gone back to the dark side and raised Dead Boy Junior to do his evil bidding in God-knows-what dastardly scheme that almost certainly involves making Buffy's life even more miserable, and you told _Andrew_ and not _me_?" Xander fumed visibly, and dear lord, he couldn't have gotten taller in Africa, could he? He'd acquired a decently menacing loom somehow.

Giles regarded Xander levelly. "I needed you where you were. Besides, you've never been exactly objective about either Angel or Spike."

"And _you_ are? Besides, _objective_ is not what we need. A big damn _ass-kicking_ is what we need." Xander's eye narrowed even further. "And you're _still_ not giving me all the details, are you? What are you afraid I'm going to do?"

Giles flinched ever so slightly. "I'm remembering exactly why I neglected to tell you about this earlier."

Xander glared back at him. "All that crap you spun Buffy about making generals having to make hard decisions? Time to follow through. If you can't, I can. I can be on the next plane to L.A."

Giles's spine straightened almost painfully. "_Xander_. I told you, I need you elsewhere. And this may still be nothing."

Xander's chin lifted defiantly. "Right. _Nothing_." His gaze indicated the monitor and the haphazard piles of books. "It really looks like you think it's nothing. I can't _imagine_ why I was ever worried. Hey, does _Andrew_ think it's nothing too?"

Giles closed his eyes wearily as he took off his glasses to polish the lenses again. "Xander..."

"No. Someone has to go take care of this. If you don't want me to go, who _do_ you want to send?"

Their eyes locked silently for another moment. "Send Faith up, will you?"

Xander took a step back, and his eye flashed. "Faith. Sure. Right."

He turned on a heel and was through the door before Giles could think of anything to say that wouldn't make things worse.

*********

Faith's bootheels made a sharp sound exactly like the rattle of a dice cup as she walked quickly down the alley. The darkened bulk of factory buildings rose on either side of her. From the smell, she suspected at least one of them made something vaguely food-related—though on second sniff of the muggy air, she decided it'd have to be a pretty distant cousin. She slowed a little, making sure her shadows didn't fall behind. Just a little closer, and she could get a good look at them. She cast an annoyed glance backwards when she reached the dead end of the alley, running short on patience.

"Hey there, sweetheart. Where ya goin' so late?" A leering voice called out from the dimness. "Looks all cold and lonely, don't she, Mick? We can warm her right up."

"You're kidding me, right?" Faith smirked at the two men who emerged from the shadows to corner her. "Seriously. You wanna walk away now, maybe think about proving what men you are on each other or some shit. Take turns, play nice, everybody wins." She tucked her hair behind her ear and grinned even wider as neither of them made any answer besides a nasty laugh.

They kept coming, one alongside each wall, obviously trying to flank her.

"Good. Got some kinks I need to work out after that damn flight. Might as well teach you boys an important lesson while I'm at it. Gonna need to get back into my teaching groove while I'm here anyway."

The taller of the two men paused about three feet away. He grinned back at Faith, and a gold tooth winked at her in the faint glow that barely reached them from the nearest streetlight. He leisurely pulled a switchblade from the back pocket of his grubby jeans and clicked it open, holding it up as if displaying it for her inspection. "_Mouthy_ little chit, ain't ya? Loads better things you could be doin' with that mouth, darlin'."

His free hand shot out and grabbed for her nearer arm just as the quieter man lunged for her other side. Faith twisted out of the way of Gold-tooth's grab, simultaneously lashing out in a sidekick at the other's knee. There was a cartilaginous crunch, and he dropped to the ground with a howl. Faith pivoted on the back swing of her leg to spin clear of the man on the ground and closer to Gold-tooth. He pulled up short in surprise, but not short enough to keep her from catching the wrist of his questing arm in one deceptively small hand. She paused for the barest moment to smile wolfishly at him before driving the heel of her other hand into the back of his elbow. A second crunch followed the first like a slightly delayed echo.

"Bollocks! You _bitch_..." Gold-tooth swiped wildly at Faith with the knife in his other hand.

She leaned aside without releasing his injured arm, and swept his feet out from under him in one smooth curl of leather-clad leg. The knife clattered away across the pavement as he fell. As he dropped to the ground Faith pounced, straddling his shoulders, pinning him on the ground beneath her. His good arm flailed vainly, scrabbling to catch hold of her.

"Hey, now. Usually I like it when they buck and talk dirty to me, but you? Not so much." Faith laughed out loud. "Try lying back and thinking of England, baby. Right place for it, after all."

"Piss off, slag!" He kicked hard, twisting underneath Faith furiously.

She tsked at him and locked one arm warningly around his throat, squeezing gradually until he quieted. "Sorry. That's it for the audience participation of tonight's show. It's time to find out what we've learned, kids." Faith snapped her fingers over her shoulder without turning her head. "This goes for you, too. Don't want you to think I forgot about you over there."

The slight rasping sound of a man dragging himself away behind her subsided into a wary stillness. Faith finally glanced over and shot the man a grin. He stared back at her from where he huddled into the far wall, wide-eyed.

"Lesson the first, boys. This? Not how you wanna treat a girl. You wanna dig deep into your hearts and find some respect," she leaned down and ruffled her prisoner's hair mockingly, "Or someday some woman's gonna rip open your chests and help you look. Especially around _this_ neighborhood these days. You boys're just lucky I figured out you weren't what I was trolling for. Also, that I'm past that whole killing people thing. Usually." She reached back and slapped the ass of the man under her for good measure before rolling off of him and bouncing to her feet easily. "Oh, yeah. Lesson the second. The gold tooth? So last year. But other than that, I had a really nice time." She blew a kiss, winked, and loped towards the street.

Faith reached the mouth of the alley and glanced at her watch as she turned to jog briskly up the street. A buzzing noise and subsequent involuntary giggle broke her stride briefly less than a block away. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a vibrating phone, and flipped it open without stopping.

"Yeah, yeah. I _said_ I was on my way the first time." She rolled her eyes at the reply from the other end. "It's only been fifteen minutes. I just ran into a little snag on the way. I'm all of two blocks out—damn, you raise your voice, we won't even need the cell."

She snapped the phone shut peremptorily and ran faster. As she rounded the corner she could see Xander standing in front of the steps that led up to the large double doors of a somewhat shabby-looking warehouse. His arms were crossed sternly over his chest, and he watched her approach with a frown. Faith pulled up short as she reached him.

"See? I'm here. Can't leave you people alone for a minute. Happy now?" She panted slightly.

"Overjoyed beyond all belief. My cup runneth over with the happy." Xander's arms stayed crossed, and his scowl refused to lighten. His eyepatch only accentuated the furrow of his forehead.

Faith cocked her head uncertainly at his tone and frowned back. "Something serious go down while I was on patrol?" Her eyes flicked questioningly past him to the doors at his back.

"How would _I_ know? I'm just the messenger boy. Giles has something he needs to tell _you_ urgently. He asked me to find you and send you up to his office. _Just_ you."

Faith shifted uncomfortably under Xander's glare. "It's not like..." she trailed off, sighed, and tried again, "I probably screwed up and he just wants to chew me out in private. I'm sure it's nothing."

Xander's chin jerked up and to the side sharply, telegraphing his frustration. "Funny, I think I've already heard that once tonight. Nothing. Sure. That'll be why he looks older than his books. That'll be why he called up Kennedy and asked her if Willow was well enough to travel yet. That'll be why he and _Andrew_..." Xander brought himself up short. "Right. It's a nothingpalooza with sugar on top."

Faith stiffened as he spoke, and moved to push past him. He turned to catch her shoulder as she went by. She paused and swung back towards him.

Xander offered something that might have looked like a smile from very far away. "And Faith? Your man? Also been waiting for you. In the lounge. For an hour and a half."

Faith flinched. "Ah, _crap_. He should've called to remind me."

"Man follows you around the world, maybe he thinks he shouldn't have to _remind_ you that he exists every five minutes." Xander's mouth hardened even further.

Faith's fists clenched for a moment before she counted to ten and exhaled carefully. "You wanna take it out on me 'cause you lost your girl and your home? 'Cause you come back from walkabout to find that your friends are killing themselves with guilt over the price we paid to save the world? You wanna give me shit 'cause Giles might be depending on me more than you want him to? Go right ahead. I can take it." She pulled away from Xander's grip firmly yet gently. "But you're gonna have to wait to do it til after I find out what's going on."

As she reached the doors and pressed her thumb to the scanner concealed under the knob, she heard Xander speak again, his voice soft as a whisper, but heavy with pain. "You're not Buffy. You'll _never_ be Buffy."

Faith pushed the doors open and answered in a level tone without looking back, "No. Never said I was. But I'm the one who's here." And she slipped across the threshold and left the door to swing silently shut against the night behind her.


	2. Creating a Hostile Workplace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Wolfram and Hart proves to be an unpleasant employer on pretty much every level, Spike finds a new use for his poetry, and the Senior Partners don't quite agree on what they should do about Angel &amp; Co.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gen in this chapter.

Lilah had decided that the worst thing about being undead was the lighting. It was the first thing she'd noticed when she'd come to work in one of Wolfram and Hart's hell-divisions after she'd died, and it had only grown more maddening with time. Normal fluorescent lights had an awful, sickly glow. These were so much worse than that. They were searingly bright, even through eyelids or clenched fingers; there weren't any shadows anywhere. The light rendered everything stark and ugly. Also, there was the hum. It vibrated through her teeth constantly, inescapably.

Lilah was pretty sure that it was the lights that made all of them eager for an assignment that might get them out of here for awhile. After all, when there was no more salary to motivate the workers, something else had to fill the void.

Lilah restlessly glanced at her office door and then at her watch, which wasn't as useful in this case as it could be, given that time passed at a different rate here than it did in L.A. She looked back at the email message she'd been typing, and clicked 'delete' with more force than was absolutely necessary. Had it been long enough to go talk to Holland again without it seeming suspiciously like she was too concerned? Surely a whole half hour (and what was that in L.A. time again? Something like ten minutes, but she'd need to plug it into her conversion table to be exactly sure) was enough, under the circumstances. Who wouldn't be curious? She toed her shoes back on and sprang up just as her door opened inwards.

"Lilah. Good. I was hoping to catch you in." Holland closed the door behind himself firmly. His usual smug smile was missing, and as much as Lilah had always hated it, its absence left her with a vague sense of unease. "The Senior Partners have finished their debate over Angel." He leaned forward and braced his hands on Lilah's desk. "They disagree."

Lilah frowned at him uncertainly. "Which means...?"

"Which means there's going to be a bit of internal conflict."

"Internal conflict." Lilah's eyebrows rose.

"Internal conflict of the kind you usually accompany with shock troops and executions at dawn," Holland clarified helpfully.

Lilah sat back down. "Ah." She crossed her legs and leaned back into her chair with every appearance of sophisticated nonchalance. "And which set of shock troops will we be standing behind today?"

Now _there_ was the smug smile. "The winning set, of course. In this case, it looks like that will be the set that wants Angel and his team contained and tortured rather than torn into tiny, unrecognizable pieces." Holland gave a small, philosophical shrug. "Pity, really. I'd have liked to see Angel dusted, but I suppose seeing him tortured for eternity—or at least until the remaining Senior Partners think he's needed back on this plane—will still make these long nights of undeath fly right by."

Lilah snorted delicately. "Contained and tortured? They do know Angel's already a master of self-torture? The Puritans had nothing on him. What are we going to do, force him to talk about his feelings?"

Holland's smile widened until the garish light ricocheted off of his canines. "Better. We're going to send him—and his people—on a lovely little vacation." He waited a moment, obviously enjoying Lilah's blank look. "We have a holding dimension that's hardly being used right now. The Senior Partners think it should do nicely. And that's where you come in, Lilah."

"You want me to make their transportation arrangements? Possibly mix them up some tasty welcome drinks with umbrellas and little bits of fruit?"

"No, no. I've already made the arrangements. I've dispatched a team to take care of it as quickly as possible. Assuming they arrive in time to deport Angel and company before the other side's troops manage a messy execution, we'll need some new...programming to upload, if you will. I want you to design new memories for all of them. You know them best; I think you have the best shot at making something really special. Design something that will keep them confused and in emotional agony. We don't want them able to try anything unexpectedly clever sometime down the line."

He paused, and his eyes glinted conspiratorially. "And Lilah? If you feel the need to use this opportunity to stoop to getting some creative personal revenge..." Holland rested a hip on her desk and leaned forward to pat Lilah's hand, "Please feel free. And get some for me while you're down there."

Lilah found an answering grin more easily than she expected. "The possibilities boggle the mind. How many sets of memories will I need to make?"

"Between the destruction of the Circle of the Black Thorn and this civil war between the Senior Partners, we're going to want to be pro-active about deporting anyone who might stir up trouble for us while we're re-establishing our power base during this difficult time. We'll need to make examples out of anyone who's been seen to clash with us. My secretary should be emailing the complete list of the people you'll be needing to cover as we speak. We may add more, of course, but it should give you something to start with."

Lilah's eyes slid to her monitor, which was indeed displaying new mail. She clicked one maroon-lacquered fingernail on her mouse to open the attached file, and immediately raised an eyebrow. Her smile gained several degrees of sincerity. "Lindsey McDonald? Oh, _Holland_. But I didn't get you _anything_."

Holland chuckled. "I thought you might especially enjoy that part. We're also hoping to toss in whoever it is that's acting as the agent of the _other_ Senior Partners on Earth. Once we work out who that is."

Lilah frowned. "We don't know?"

Holland shook his head. "Not yet, but we should have an ID shortly. Whoever it is has managed to summon legions of demons and a _dragon_ on impressively short notice." He shook his head again, looking a bit bemused. "I remember when you used to only see dragons at the better class of apocalypse. You knew you weren't in just any series of plagues if you saw a dragon. Now every little rain of frogs has one." Holland sighed long-sufferingly. "It just cheapens things for the rest of us."

Only half paying attention, Lilah's eyes skipped back up to the top of the list. "I would have thought Angel's son would be here."

"He would, but we don't know enough about his nature to know if that would be wise. You know how delicate these constructed universes are. If you drop in anything too powerfully psychic or magical, they become completely unpredictable. He might burst it like a soap-bubble. You'll notice we left out Angel's empath demon and former god on the same principle." Holland's smile disappeared and his eyes went even colder than they usually were, which was a feat in itself. "And Drusilla."

Lilah glanced up at Holland and tried to keep her gaze from lingering on his throat. "So I see. I assume Lorne and Illyria will be left behind as chew toys for the dragon?"

"I think that's the most expedient course. Our Senior Partners don't feel they have anything more to offer us." Holland waved a hand airily and pushed away from her desk.

He turned to go, but paused as he reached the door. "And Lilah?" He waited until she looked up to give him her full attention. "No more emails to the remnants of the Watcher's Council. It doesn't appear to have arrived in time to do any harm, but don't let it happen again. You've been such a fine employee. I'd hate to see you get carried away by sentiment and...lose your head." He looked pointedly at the silk scarf she wore knotted jauntily around her neck.

Lilah stiffened and reflexively blanked her face. "I know my priorities." She regarded Holland warily.

And there was that smug smile again. "I have every faith that you do."

"Have you told...?" She let the sentence lay in the air half-finished, and wanted to wince at the nervousness that had crept into her normally self-assured tone.

Holland cocked his head at her, obviously amused. "What would you do in my shoes, Lilah?" He flashed her his canines again and strode out of her office, humming Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" as he went.

Lilah waited until the door swung safely shut behind him to whisper, "Throw myself on the mercy of the nearest Prada salesman as soon as possible, you son-of-a-bitch."

Only the ever-present hum of the lights answered her, but she could swear it adopted a distinctly mocking tone.

*********

"No, seriously, the entire story is an allegory for basic Freudian theory. See, the Cat is clearly meant to represent the Id, and the Fish is the superego. When the Cat releases Thing One and Thing Two, he's totally urging the kids to give in to their primal urges. Plus, you've got all this desire to please the mother figure, and I ask you, where's the father? Oedipal down to the ground." Vincent punctuated each assertion animatedly with one hand while steering the van with the other. The pale skin of his face above his black clothing combined with the dimness of the van's interior made him look something like an overexcited, disembodied head.

Bexley stared in horror. "Stop right there, Vin. Man, you've ruined that story for me completely. I swear to god, if the next words out of your mouth have _anything_ to do with penis envy, I am _so_ jumping out of this van. You're a total freak, you know that, kid?"

Vincent spared a moment from watching the dark road whip by at dizzying speed to give Bexley a wounded look. "Hey, no big. Just making conversation. Ten-some-odd more miles to go to L.A. and all. Never mind." He ruffled his pale hair with the hand closest to Bexley, almost in a cringing, warding motion.

Bexley sighed in resignation. He self-consciously shifted his slightly aching knee to a more comfortable angle, absently noting that a storm must be blowing up somewhere nearby to have set off his old injury. After a few more moments of pointed silence, he started fiddling distractedly with the heavy tome lodged between their seats, determined not to apologize this time.

He held out for another two miles of moonlit highway. "Look, I'm sorry, Vin. I don't mean to knock your theories and what-all. You want to tell me about the fuck-uppedness of modern lit, knock yourself out. Just don't take Seuss's name in vain, okay? That's too damn creepy."

When Vincent offered a grudging, small smile in answer, Bexley sighed again, but this time with more of a sense of exasperated affection. He looked down at the pages his hand was rifling through and found inspiration. "Hey, Vin. Why'd the vampire flunk art class?"

Vincent tipped his head to the side in thought for a moment. "I give. Why?"

"Cause he could only draw blood." Bexley grinned at Vincent's groan and parried the playful swat Vincent aimed in his direction.

"Bex! You always tell stinkers like that and _I'm_ the freak?" But Vincent said it with a chuckle behind it, and no heat at all. His eyes caught briefly on the book Bexley still toyed with before swinging dutifully back to watch the road. "Do I owe this hideous vampire-themed torture to one of our marks?"

"Looks like. Wait, I lie...to two of them. Crap, I hate doing vamps. I can't believe we're the closest team. What about the guys that work out of the L.A. office?"

Vincent shrugged philosophically. "No telling. Ours not to reason why and all that. Anyway, I like doing vamps. Never have to get any qualms with that kind, do you?"

Bexley was already shaking his head, "No, no, no. We ain't going through this again, are we? Guys like you and me, don't matter who we work for. What, we should work for Enron and help cheat the other little people? Mercedes-Benz, maybe? Help poison the air? Not a damn company out there that ain't evil, Vin. They're all predators."

"I know, I know. We're cogs in the wheel, bricks in the wall, and whatever other nondescript building block analogy you can come up with today." Vincent made a small frustrated huffing noise. "It's just...some days I can't help but feel like maybe that's a little defeatist. Some of these things they ask us to do seem a little...well, questionable. Not all of them, and maybe there are reasons, but if there are, we never know."

Bexley pinched the bridge of his nose between two mocha-colored fingers. "That's the only thing we little people can count on, Vin. Shit happens, and we _never_ know why. At least our predator's got decent dental and two weeks paid vacation every year. Could be worse. Give it some time. When you've been at this for longer than a couple months, it'll get easier. And don't miss the exit."

Vincent shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but didn't contradict Bexley. After a moment of silence during which he negotiated the city streets at a dizzying speed, he glanced over, his blue eyes recessed pools of darkness in the night. His brow furrowed as the book in Bexley's hands caught his eye again. "Hey. The guy there on the top of that page. What's it say his name is? He looks familiar."

Bexley squinted at the print by the green glow of the dash lights. "Angel. Wait, wasn't he the guy in charge in L.A. when we passed through here two weeks ago?"

"Yeah, I think so. We saw him for a minute in the elevator, I think. The rude one. With the hair. And that secretary with all the pink."

Bexley frowned thoughtfully. "Huh. Wonder what he did to get shoved down the rabbit hole? Not that it takes too much, these days."

"Good old Wolfram and Hart office politics, no doubt. They do kinda make Machiavelli look like a teenaged virgin priestess-trainee dedicated to the goddess Fides."

Bexley stared at Vincent for a moment in incredulity. "Uh huh. What you said, man. What-the-hell-ever it was." He shook his head and looked back down at the tome to avoid seeing the scenery careening past at speeds that could only worry him. The text writhed on the page as an update spelled itself out. "Hey, now it says to hang a left two lights up. Gotta pick up two of our marks separately. Looks like someone got to 'em first, poor bastards. Says we should drop whatever's left down the portal anyways."

Vincent shivered and thumped his fist decisively on the steering wheel. "That's _it_. No more giving it time. Two week's notice, starting now. I need a job that doesn't include riding around with 'whatever's left' in the back of my van until we can toss it into an inter-dimensional gateway. There are so many things wrong with that sentence that I don't even know where to start."

Bexley reached over an patted Vin's shoulder awkwardly. "Water. Duck. Something like that, man. Let's just get it done, then we'll talk. Books says this is our stop up here." When Vin didn't answer, he tried again. "Hey, Vin. What's the difference between a vampire and a lawyer?"

Vin shot a glower at Bexley and pulled the van to a screeching halt. He yanked the keys from the ignition, threw himself out of his seat, and slammed the door behind himself, grudgingly falling into step beside Bexley before he looked over again. His tone was still tight with frustration when he finally offered, "All right, what?"

"The vampire stops sucking you dry when you're dead." Bex grinned faintly at Vin's sigh and reached for the door in front of them.

He stopped cold on the threshold. Vin craned to look over his shoulder, and went painfully still. Bexley gingerly edged his way into the room, wincing at the way his shoes stuck to the drying blood and ichor on the floor. He picked his way towards the sprawled body of a man amid the carnage. He looked at the picture in the book he still held labeled 'Lindsey McDonald', and looked back down at the man on the ground.

Bexley nodded grimly. "This is the one." He looked back at Vincent, who still stood rooted on the threshold with one hand over his mouth. Bex nodded again. "Right. Two weeks. You type up the notice soon as this job's done, we'll both sign."

*********

Spike rode the tide of demons like a child leaping and struggling through rolling waves at the ocean. It occurred to him, completely inconsequentially, that he really hated the feel of slime and rainwater worming into his boots and between his toes.

Spike was busy keeping one eye on Angel, who was dancing intently around the dragon, and one on Gunn, who was still bleeding freely and beginning to falter badly. Spike hoped that Blue was taking care of herself all right; he'd lost track of her in the crush of demons, and he didn't have a spare eye to find her again. The whoosh of air past his ear in the wake of a giant talon reminded him that he wasn't really sparing an eye for his own problems too well, either.

Spike could barely hear Angel chanting a litany of names with every sword stroke at the dragon. He recognized Wes and Fred and Cordy among them. In a creepy counterpoint, Spike could hear Gunn on his other side gasping out "Say my name, Bitch!" over and over as he swung his axe in increasingly stuttering arcs. Spike hoped that Gunn was talking to the demons rather than to Angel.

It suddenly occurred to Spike that when one of their attackers eventually managed to dust him, his dust would mix with the rain and blood and ichor. It wouldn't be clean like his last death. He'd leave a sort of thick mud on all these clawed feet and cloven hooves. He didn't think this should seem fitting, but it did. He greeted his next assailant with: "Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that earth which kept the world in awe should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw!" Funny how there really was a Shakespearean quote for every eventuality.

A quick check revealed that Angel had moved on to someone named Jenny, and Gunn had added "Got your Armageddon right here!" to his repertoire. Since it seemed like the thing to do, Spike shrugged and started a chant of his own. "My soul is wrapped in harsh repose! Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes--but soft...behold!" He dodged aside as the same talon stabbed at his head again. A quick grab and a twist with all his weight behind it, and the talon came free with an acrid fountain of slime. "A sunlight beam cutting a swath of glimmering gleam!" He whirled the detached talon over his head and leapt at a demon looming over Gunn. "My heart expands, 'tis grown a bulge in it! Inspired by your beauty..." Spike stabbed the talon into the demon's single eye, "...effulgent!"

Gunn shook his head as he painfully wheeled to face the next demon, every inch the wounded lion at bay. He managed to wheeze out, "Better just keep your growin' bulge over there. Got me 'nough problems."

"Got some life in there yet, eh, Charlie-boy?" Spike jabbed an elbow at something with too many arms.

"More than you, Fangs." Gunn parried a claw that menaced his ribs and staggered back with a grunt.

Spike, his hands busy fending off his own share of attackers, swung around to brace Gunn back to back without missing a beat.

"Should be helpin' Angel," Gunn managed.

"You're a better dancer. Always wants to lead, Peaches does. An' he's got two left feet." Spike leaned harder against Gunn's back and didn't mention the increasingly anxious eye he still had on Angel, who now clung precariously to the dragon's neck.

"Don't make me come back there." Gunn tried to say something else, but it came out more gasp than words.

Spike's jaw tightened to pure marble, but his tone stayed resolutely light. "Or what? Going to stop this bloody war and make me walk home?" He kicked savagely at the knee of the vampire in front of him and tried not to notice Gunn sliding gradually down his back.


	4. Opening Doors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neither arguments nor portals ever quite work out like one intends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes implied slash, femslash, and het.

Buffy kicked the front door closed behind herself with the platform heel of one stylish and not entirely practical shoe. She juggled a gallon carton of ice cream back and forth between her stingingly chilled hands and stood listening for a moment in the dim living room.

"Dawn! Are you here? I brought a yummy caramel-swirled peace offering." She crossed to the doorway of the room she'd shared with Dawn ever since Andrew had moved in with them and claimed the other bedroom, and pushed the door further ajar.

Dawn looked up from her suitcase, folded clothes in her hands, lonely hangers dangling forlornly in her half of the closet behind her. "I'm just on my way out," she said evenly, in a voice that boded nothing but ill in Buffy's experience.

Buffy's hands tightened on the ice cream carton, feeling it crunch slightly in her grip. "Out? What, you can't decide what to wear to the disco so you thought you'd just take all your clothes to be on the safe side?"

Dawn's chin came up aggressively. And that? Boded nothing but more ill, ill, ill. "I'm going back to London. My flight leaves in two hours."

"Your flight? Your flight doesn't leave at _all_. And where did you get the money to buy a ticket, anyway?"

"You know your bank card?" Dawn tilted her head challengingly. "Yeah, you might not wanna leave it on the bathroom counter again, 'cause Andrew's been saying that he really needs to replace his lost DVD collection."

"You used my bank card?" Buffy's eyes narrowed. "Am I losing short term memory? Did I forget the conversation where you _asked_ me if you could use my card? I thought you gave up stealing."

Dawn violently hurled the clothes she was still holding into the suitcase. "And I thought _you_ gave up pushing me away! You always say that things will be different if we can just get through whatever next bad thing there is, and they never are! And you know what? There's _always_ going to be _just one more_ crisis, Buffy. Always." She zipped her suitcase closed with a jerk, the hiss of stressed metal sounding shrill. "I thought when there were other slayers maybe things really _would_ change. Maybe you'd finally have time for me."

Buffy shook her head in bewildered denial. "You see me every day!"

Dawn folded her arms across her chest. "No, I see freaky bipolar Buffy. You're either all guilty and snapping at anything that moves, or you're all avoidy and snuggling with Mister Tall Dark and Smarmy, pretending that you're just another carefree college dropout."

Buffy's mouth gaped for a minute before she could rally and muster a good defense. "That is so not true!" Okay, maybe not a _good_ defense so much. "I'm not snappy or avoidy! I'm the very picture of calm and not-avoidy. I'm the essence of not-avoidy-ness! " Best not to even go near the guilty part, because, well, _duh_. Of course she was.

"Oh, _please_. Look at your shoes! And your nails!" Dawn pointed accusingly. "They've never been that clean before. Or that perfect. You haven't been training or fighting anything in weeks. We haven't had to buy stain remover _in the entire time we've been here_. You've just been reading those news clippings about the dead newbie slayers. And then you get all wallowy and miserable, and _then_ you go and party your brains out so you can pretend that everything's okay. You've given up on actually doing anything, and you've shut out anyone who tries to tell you that."

Buffy struggled not to look at her fingernails, which really were perfectly manicured without so much as a speck of dust under them. "That's not true. It's not, Dawnie." Her voice sounded a little pleading, even to her own ears, and she saw Dawn's jaw soften a little. "This is me here! Remember me? The girl who doesn't give up, shut up, or stay down—even when she's _dead_? I haven't given up, and I'm not shutting anyone out. I'm not giving up on anything, Dawnie—it's just that everything I do seems to make things worse. People died following me. People are _still_ dying because of what I did. I just want to stop going off half baked. I wanna be baked all the way until there's no more doughy center at all." She blinked a little. "Okay, note to self: lay off the baking metaphors, because they never really work out all that well. But you know what I mean. I wanna be really _sure_ about my next plan."

"This isn't looking before you leap, Buffy. This is freezing up until you can't do anything."

"I'm doing something! Giancarlo and I are working on—"

Dawn rolled her eyes and cut Buffy off peremptorily. "Right. I _so_ don't wanna hear about what you and The Immoral are up to."

"Don't _call_ him that! And we need his help."

Dawn's eyes glinted sardonically, and she'd obviously spent way too many of her formative years talking to Spike, because it was his look exactly. "Why, is your _zipper_ stuck?"

Buffy spluttered slightly. "Dawn! That is _enough_."

"No, it isn't. It isn't even _close_ to enough. He keeps saying he can help, but all I see him doing is talking. And making out with you on the couch, which, by the way? Not an image I really needed, thanks."

"He's getting scrolls and books and things from all over the world. And he knows everybody," Buffy insisted defensively.

"Funny how Giles doesn't seem to hold out much hope for these 'people' His Mysteriousness 'knows'," Dawn fumed, scorn so obvious in her tone that she didn't even need to make air quotes.

Buffy's lips thinned to a pink-glossed razor edge. "Giles doesn't know everything." And she didn't say a word about Spike, not a _word_, but she could feel the shape of his name in her mouth anyway.

"_Fine_. You keep waiting for Captain Smoother-Than-Thou to make good. But I'm going back to London."

"No! Dawn—" Buffy stepped forward, reaching out with one cold, condensation-slicked hand for Dawn's arm.

Dawn shrugged back hard, evading contact. "_Buffy_. I want to help. You won't let me help you. Maybe I can do something for Giles."

"Dawn, you aren't going to—" Buffy threw up her hands in frustration. "Okay, fine. You know what? Go. Go if you want to."

Dawn stared hard at her for a long moment, then jerked her chin in a single decisive nod. Without a word, she picked up her bag, turned on her heel, and strode past Buffy. Her feet didn't stomp through the living room and the front door didn't even slam behind her, which oddly made it seem worse, more final.

Buffy wandered aimlessly back to the couch, dropping the ice cream carton carelessly on the coffee table, to sit and pull her feet up under her and wind her arms around her shins.

From the far side of the table, the rigidly stacked reports and news clippings about the slayer-related death and mayhem stared accusingly back at her. She'd actually dreamed about them yesterday; in her nightmare, they'd been whispering their horrible news in the dead of night, and she'd come from her room to find them gushing blood so fast that it was flooding the apartment. She'd sent for a plumber, who'd told her that she'd need a full copper re-pipe. And then he'd given her his estimate, which had been a casualty list on a long scroll that just kept spooling out as if it had no end. It'd been written over with name after name after name, and she remembered wondering despairingly how she could ever afford so much.

Yeah, it didn't really take Freud to figure that one out.

Buffy buried her face against her knees hard enough to feel the crosshatched weave of her pants imprinting into her cheeks, smelling club-smoke and sweaty cotton. Her perfect hair—because it wasn't taking any harder wear than her fingernails or her shoes or her clothes these days; split ends were things that happened to _other_ people now—swept down around her shoulders like sheltering wings. Okay, so maybe she wasn't in such a good place right now. But hey, on the upside, she looked really good while she was there. It wasn't actually much of a comfort.

A small, tentative cough echoed unnaturally loudly through the apartment. Buffy raised her head to find Andrew fidgeting uncomfortably at the door of his room. As she looked up at him he offered her a wan smile that tried a little too hard.

"Um. Hey, Buffy!" He waved with jerky awkwardness. "I didn't mean to disturb you. You know, if you're doing one of those mindful warrior meditation things like a Jedi knight and not sitting in the dark moping or something."

They blinked at each other, and Andrew hastily raised a hand as if to snatch his words back. "Oh! Not that you're depressed or anything. Or course you're not, no, you're totally the opposite of the dark side. You can't even see the dark side from where you are—it's, like, completely on the other side of the galaxy where you couldn't even get to it with a wormhole. So of course you're not moping, because...um. Am I still talking?" he asked in smaller voice, looking a little dazed and desperate. "Can I get you a bowl, or...?" he trailed off, gesturing vaguely between the ice cream carton which still squatted on the table in front of Buffy in a growing puddle of water and the kitchen.

Buffy rubbed a hand quickly across her damp eyes, smiling slightly in spite of herself. Sometimes, just sometimes, she could almost hear an echo of the girl Willow had been in Andrew. It felt a little like home, and it made not whacking him over the head with her shoe much easier. "Yeah. And a spoon. And if there was ever a time for chocolate syrup and whipped cream? It's now."

Andrew darted off to bustle about the kitchen. The clatter of bowls and spoons and just the sound of his puttering around was oddly soothing. _Very_ oddly, and how the hell was this her life?

Andrew breezed busily back in to hand her a blue glass bowl, its curving sides already dewing with condensation that tickled down Buffy's fingers to the insides of her wrists. She stared into the bowl as if it held all the secrets of the universe writ in chocolate and caramel swirls.

"Dawn left," she said after a minute, her voice dull and drained even to her own ears.

"Oh." Andrew appeared to mull this over as he sat down in the armchair across from her and took a bite from his own bowl. "She went out?"

"No." Buffy stirred her ice cream around, squishing it to soup under her spoon. "She _left_. She's headed back to London."

"Oh," Andrew said again, smaller this time. "That's. Um. I'm sorry."

"Yeah." Buffy sighed and gave up pulping her ice cream, stuffing a heaping spoonful into her mouth instead.

"It's not your fault," Andrew murmured, quiet but painfully sincere.

"You know what?" Buffy grinned humorlessly at him. "It really is. I'm starting to suspect that maybe everything is. The San Andreas has got _nothing_ on me."

"It _isn't_," Andrew insisted. "Sometimes there isn't a right thing to do. Sometimes there's only bad and worse." He pointed at her with his spoon. "Maybe this _is_ the best way things could have worked out. And even if it isn't, it's definitely not the worst either. Besides, you had to do _something_."

"Sure," Buffy said with deadly brittle brightness. "I just condemned lots of women to death, got some of my friends killed, and alienated almost everybody I know. Now _that's_ what I call a plan. Go, me!"

Andrew flinched a little. "A great man once said that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Which, at the time? Totally the saddest thing ever. But he wasn't wrong."

"Well, yeah. I know that. But still. There had to be a better way." She squeezed her eyes closed. "Every night I try to think of something else I could've done. Something smarter, faster, more clever."

"You were smarter, faster, and more clever than _the First Evil that ever was_. Buffy, you saved the world. You're still my hero."

Which, actually? Was pretty sweet. Buffy's eyes flew open, and she felt her forehead scrunch into the furrows of a shocked frown. "Oh my god. I'm seriously being comforted by an ex-evil nerd who regularly gets his ass kicked by funnel cake."

"Hey!" Andrew raised an indignant finger at shake at her. "Deep frying is _hard_."

Buffy covered her face and laughed into the hollow of her cupped hands; and if it sounded a little stunned, a little punchy, they both pretended not to notice.

"Anyway," Andrew went on staunchly, "everybody's working on making this right. You don't have to carry everything by yourself anymore. The world is your oyster now." He grimaced, his nose wrinkling in obvious distaste. "Except for the part where it would be really kind of gross if the world was your lump of animated mucous on the half shell. Why do people say that? Okay, so maybe the world's your holodeck."

"You know what else is really scary? I'm actually starting to get all the geek-speak that comes out of your mouth." Buffy smirked a little, the slightly chocolatey corners of her mouth curling up ever so slightly.

Andrew made a small, indignant huffing noise. "Don't tell me you never watched anything from the Trek oeuvre. That would be _sacrilege_. It's, like, the backbone of sci-fi!"

Buffy raised a hand in concession. "I may have seen a little. But only because that Tom Paris was seriously hot."

Andrew nodded thoughtfully. "True. Not quite as hot as Spike is, but still."

Buffy caught her breath and felt the smile melt from her face like silver dropped into a crucible. Her sudden silence had a crushing weight to it. Andrew frowned quizzically at her, clearly not understanding what he'd said wrong.

"Was," she whispered into that quiet.

Andrew went very still, his eyes going wide and dismayed. "Oh! Yes. I'm sorry, I was just, um, confused. Because I get confused sometimes, you know, especially when I'm eating ice cream very fast or when—" He cut off abruptly as Buffy's hand darted out to fist into the front of his shirt.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him. "There's something you aren't telling me."

He shook his head frantically. "No! There isn't anything. I'm all about the sharing."

Her tightening hold jerked him forward so hard that his mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth before he could ramble on further. "You know, I'd totally believe you, except that I haven't seen such bad acting since Xander played Oedipus. And now you're gonna tell me whatever it is you know, because I'm just easy to talk to like that."

Andrew's eyes darted to either side like they were trying to escape his head and possibly crawl away to hide under the couch. He forced a small, shrill laugh out of his throat. "Well! I mean, it's not like Spike's alive or anything, because...because he's not. That would be completely weird, right? So it's not like that at all."

Buffy could hear her blood pounding in her ears, and what happened to all the air in the room? "Spike," she choked out thickly. "He's alive?"

"Uh, no?" But he said it in a tiny, hopeful voice that was completely transparent.

"Spike's alive." Buffy exhaled the words, breath tangled with wonder.

"Oh _crap_," Andrew moaned. "Mister Giles is gonna _kill_ me."

*********

"Y'know, I can think of better places to be in a thunderstorm than the roof of some high-ass building. Screw this 'vantage point' crap," Bexley muttered under his breath, peering suspiciously through the strengthening rain at the angry sky. "And that ain't even taking into account the giant fucking _dragon_ nobody thought to tell us about. Funny how the words 'war zone' never came up. You'd think the stupid book would mention that."

"Mmmhmm," was all Vincent replied. He huddled under their umbrella, his shoulders hunched over the large leather-bound tome cradled in his arms.

And yeah, Bexley would've known it even without this proof: if anybody could sit on a rooftop in the rain while a dragon soared past spewing fire into the stormy sky and _still_ get lost in a book? It'd be Vin.

"'Draw circle A around runes B and C, then place bloodstones on the cardinal points as shown in figure 36,'" Vincent murmured abstractedly, squinting at the picture in the book in the dim glow of the security light that shone from above the rooftop stairwell door. "Bex, does that look like a right angle to you?" He lifted the book towards Bexley and blinked up solemnly through the wet straggles of hair hanging over his eyes.

Bexley studied the diagram for a moment, then tilted his head to try looking at it sideways. "Probably. Who writes the instruction manuals for this crap, anyway? We'll be lucky if we don't open a portal to three weeks from Thursday."

"Feelancers, I think." Vincent shrugged. "Lowest bidders too, most likely."

Bexley snorted. "Wouldn't that just figure? But seriously man, you got a pathological failure to recognize rhetorical questions, you know that?"

"But a rhetorical question is supposed to imply its own answer, which yours couldn't because you don't know it." Vin flashed Bexley a quizzical, distracted frown before his head dropped back into the book.

Bexley grunted a soft chuckle that was lost in the low hiss of the rain. He rubbed the bemused half-grin quirking at his lips with the heel of his hand, but it refused to come off. "Never mind, Vin. You just keep up the little-geek-lost thing, and I'll handle all the scary human interaction stuff. That's what we Earthlings call 'teamwork'."

"Mmmhmm," Vincent answered again, totally missing the corner of Bexley's nascent grin that escaped to curl up higher across his face.

Bexley shook his head affectionately and turned away to lean out gingerly over the side of the building. The din rising from the battle below echoed off of the high walls that hedged the alley. From this vantage it was possible to keep track of their marks in the melee and rain-drenched dark, but it was still a challenge. He scanned the crowd for a long moment before a moon-pale blond head bobbed up over the crushing tide of demons. Right, that was one of them. And there, at that one's back, the sheen of a bald head marked another. As Bexley watched, the bald one staggered and went down. The blond roared, leaping to stand over him as the surrounding attackers made to fall on the toppled warrior like jackals.

"Pretty scrappy," Bexley called over his shoulder to Vincent just loudly enough to carry over the cacophony. "These guys, I mean. Whatever they got themselves into, looks like we'll be doin' 'em a favor to get 'em out."

Vincent paused, one hand still clutching the book, the other grinding a piece of chalk against the ground in odd spiraling patterns. His eyes flickered up to meet Bexley's sidelong gaze gravely. "I'd like to think so, but that's probably because guilt makes me queasy. There are worse things than being torn apart by demons."

Bexley pulled a face at Vincent. "Maybe so, but I'll bet it's a damn short list."

"Are you sure we have to—"

"_Yes_. We talked about this. Let's get this done and get gone. We don't know what's going on here and we don't _want_ to. And we _damn_ sure don't want to screw over Wolfram and Hart."

But Vin's earnest blue eyes were still fixed on him with that look that made him want to stand up straight and try to watch his language. Damn that look. Bexley turned away uncomfortably, his shoulders hitching under the burden of that regard.

"Hey," he said after a minute, trying not to sound like he was changing the subject at all. "One of our guys is up on top of the dragon's head now. It'd be really cool if it wasn't the stupidest thing I ever saw anybody do."

"Done," Vincent proclaimed with a relieved sigh, evidently back to missing Bexley's side of the conversation completely.

Bexley pulled himself away from watching the crazy man with the dragon, and turned back to find a wavering in the air, like an especially strong heat shimmer, between him and Vincent.

"Okay." Bexley walked back to the two corpses they'd left by the roof access door. "Let's get these guys through, then work on getting the rest."

Vincent climbed to his feet and moved as if to come and help, which made something in Bexley's throat tighten.

"No." He caught Vin's arm firmly to stop him. "I got this. You go...keep an eye on those other three."

Vincent opened his mouth as if to protest, but he was even paler than usual, looking like a wan ghost in the dimness. Bexley squeezed the forearm he held and pushed Vin gently away from the bodies. Vin nodded once, shakily, and let himself be diverted. He didn't watch as Bexley dragged the corpses over and heaved them into the rippling portal. They flickered out of existence with a slight whoosh of displaced air.

"Right." Bexley joined Vincent at the side of the roof, holding out his hand expectantly for the crystal that Vin dropped into his palm and ducking under the meager shelter of the umbrella that Vin still held. "Where're our boys, then?"

Vin pointed into the sky where the dragon trumpeted angrily and shook its head like a terrier that had gotten hold of a rat. "Saint George is still clinging to the dorsal spines. It doesn't look especially constructive, but wow, that's tenacity."

"Tenacity my _ass_. That's industrial strength crazy is what _that_ is. That whole 'they're more scared of you than you are of them' thing? Really don't think it was meant for dragons."

He sighted along the clear, jagged spar of quartz crystal until the tapered point was aimed directly at the man wrapped around one of the thrashing dragon's sharp spines. He had to keep the crystal moving quickly to match pace with the dragon's aerial acrobatics; timing it carefully to coincide with a barrel roll that left the clinging figure fully exposed, Bexley intoned, "Gra'bac meh dema!" clearly. It _really_ didn't pay to mumble at times like these.

A pulse of golden light flashed through the crystal, and a twisting arm of distorted space shot out from the portal behind them to arc its way to the dragon's back almost too fast to see. It swallowed its target smoothly, leaving the unwitting dragon writhing fiercely to no purpose at all.

"I'm not sure how well the crowd down there is going to take us stealing their kill," Vin mused as Bexley scanned the scene for their final two marks.

"Don't see how they're going to know we did it. It isn't like this is the really flashy kinda spell. But the second it's done, we're _gone_. Just in case."

Bexley spotted the blond, still trying to hold position over his fallen comrade, and started orienting the crystal.

"Um," Vincent added in a different voice. "You know that blue woman the book says we're supposed to be careful _not_ to target for some reason?" He pointed straight down at the metal stairs that switchbacked up the wall directly beneath them. "She's coming up the fire escape. She must've spotted us. Or sensed the interdimensional distortion, maybe." He looked suddenly speculative, and crap, was now ever _not_ the time for the boy to get fascinated by the weird senses of strange blue warrior women.

"_Fuck_," Bexley hissed feelingly under his breath, aiming more hastily this time. "Gra'bac meh dema!"

Another rippling tendril shot out of the portal like a striking snake, but Bexley didn't stay to see if it found its target. He grabbed Vin's wrist in his empty hand and spun around to sprint for the stairwell door. He could hear a confused-sounding hubbub rising up from behind them.

A spinning shape somersaulted over their heads to land in their path and bar the door with the gritty crunch of boots impacting hard on concrete. Bexley skidded to a halt, his hand on Vin's wrist jerking Vin back violently.

It wasn't enough.

A pale hand snapped up to close on Vincent's throat, tearing him from Bexley's grasp and lifting him off of his feet easily. The umbrella dropped to the pavement with a metallic clatter.

"Mewling sneak thieves, hiding in the dark and working their larcenous treachery," she spat in a flat voice, wide-staring blue eyes fastened icily to Vincent's face. "Did you think me so fallen that I could not feel your crude gateway? I should expect such petty cowardice from your kind." She hoisted Vin higher, ignoring his thrashing feet and the way his fingers clawed at her arm.

Bexley launched himself recklessly at her, driving his full weight behind fists that glanced harmlessly off her belly and her implacable blue-tinged face. Her gaze flickered in his direction, and her other hand blurred at preternatural speed to strike against the side of his head with dazing force. Bexley found himself on his back, blinking up at a crazily tilting sky.

"You will tell me what you have done with those that belonged to me," she said evenly.

"Portal," Bexley gasped, holding onto the ground beneath him to make it stop spinning.

She tilted her head at him and narrowed her eyes in obvious annoyance. "This I can see for myself," she said scornfully. "Whence does it lead, and for what purpose?" In her grip, awful rattling noises caught in Vincent's throat with a rough, stifled resonance. His struggling was growing slower and clumsier.

Bexley lurched to his feet, flinging up his hands to scrabble against the cold grip on Vin's neck. It was like trying to pry a mountain from the earth.

"We don't _know_. We just make the marks like Wolfram and Hart's book tells us. We're just field workers!" Bexley's voice tumbled out hastily in raw and jagged pieces. "_Please_," he begged her.

She tilted her head the other way, bird-like, as if he were an odd specimen she was studying. "Foot soldiers," she stated. "As numerous and interchangeable as grains of sand upon the shore." She hoisted Vin even higher, as if to draw him to Bex's attention. As if Bex's attention could be anywhere _else_. "This one's life is of no import."

Bexley didn't stop pulling at her grip so hard that the joints of his fingers strained and creaked, but he turned his face to fix his eyes on hers with fervent ferocity. "To you. Not to me." His voice was a ragged, naked thing now that he didn't recognize at all. "Please," he whispered again.

Something flitted across her still face, a faint tic of an expression that moved its immutable coldness. Abruptly, her hand opened, and Vin dropped limply, Bexley hastily falling with him to catch his head before it could strike pavement.

Then, softly—so softly that Bex wasn't sure he heard her right—she murmured: "Handsome man saved him from the monster."

And she turned on her heel and strode unflinchingly into the rippling distortion of the portal. As she passed through, the ripples began to writhe in a translucent, nauseating roil, and a strobe of white light began to pulse across the portal's expanse.

Bexley ignored it, fumbling a hand against Vin's chest, seeking the drum of a heartbeat. His own heart pounded so hard it thrummed in his fingertips, making it hard to distinguish anything else at first. But after a moment that stretched out terribly, he could swear he felt an echoing beat. He drew in a shuddering breath and scrubbed his free hand hard over his face.

And that was when the dragon roared overhead, so close that Bexley's ears rang painfully. He looked over his shoulder just in time to throw himself flat over Vincent as the rake of talons just barely kissed across his back and caught on the stairwell door instead, crunching it with a screech of protesting metal.

Bexley groaned in frustration. Well, of _course_. What did he expect hanging out next to the fucking _searchlight_ this portal had turned into? It was definitely expanding, and its strobe was growing stronger, reaching blinding force now. It started to keen at a shrill, plaintive pitch a little like a train whistle, and the air was redolent with an acrid stench like burning hair.

And if Bexley wasn't very much mistaken, there was an angry howling coming closer. With the luck they were having today? It really had to be a great big horde of angry and prey-deprived demons swarming up the fire escape to come see what all the fuss was about.

Then again, there was a heartbeat under his hand, and its rhythm didn't seem to be faltering. Anything less than that, hey, he could deal with it.

"It's always something," Bexley sighed. He looked glumly at the mangled door and shrugged. "When life hands you portals, make portalade."

And he wrapped both arms around Vin, dragged him up from the cold ground, and staggered into the glaring light without looking back.

*********

"Good evening; this is your Captain speaking. We're now starting our descent over Los Angeles. We're on schedule for our landing at LAX tonight, so we should be touching down in approximately 30 minutes. Local time is 2:41 a.m., and the temperature is 68 degrees. On behalf of myself and the crew, I hope you've all had a pleasant flight, and we look forward to your flying with us again."

Faith yawned, stretching as much as she could in the confined space without kicking the elderly man still sleeping in the window seat at the other side of her row. Goddamn, she hated transatlantic flights. It was just too much holding _still_. Good thing she'd managed to catch up on her sleep a lot of the way, at least; she hadn't slept this much since she got out of prison. She cracked her neck both directions and tried to wriggle a kink out of her spine.

Out of her peripheral vision, Faith caught someone stop beside her, blocking the aisle and looming above her.

"Fancy meeting you here," a voice commented from overhead.

Faith looked up, already biting back a sigh. Yep. Big brown eye glaring accusingly at her. "Harris. See you pulled a Chim Chim."

He shoulders snapped back a bit in affronted indignation. "Hold it right there! You are _not_ Speed Racer. If anything, you're Racer X. And I am _not_ a popeyed monkey, either. Just so we're clear."

"You're not a monkey, and I'm not the hero of this little thrill ride. Check." She shifted over into the empty middle seat, opening an inviting hand at the one she'd just vacated. "Now we've got the important shit out of the way, you wanna tell me what your ass is doing on this flight? I _know_ I heard Giles say he wanted you in Russia trackin' down that," she waved vaguely, frowning, "Teretan-something propehcy."

Xander shrugged with exaggerated nonchalance. "I figured you could use the back-up, so I decided to ask Robin to go to Russia instead. You know, as long as he was at a loose end." More than a tinge of bitterness lapped around the edges of his tone.

And fuck, she did _not_ have the patience for this on top of the scene she'd had with Robin before she'd left, not to mention the long-ass flight. "There somethin' you wanna say? Cause you're wanderin' pretty deep into a land called 'none of your goddamn business'."

"What's there to say? Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. Faith's gotta chew a guy's heart out and spit his empty shell over her shoulder so she can prowl for shiny new conquests."

"Aww, it sounds like you're takin' it kinda personal there." Faith grinned at him, all threat and flashing teeth. "Why Harris, are you still carryin' a torch for me?"

Xander snorted. "Maybe in the angry villager way. I already know not to get on _that_ train wreck again, thanks." He flicked a dismissive hand in her direction. "You'll have to troll somewhere else for your new chew toy."

Faith stretched again, this time more for show; it was a lazy, careless feline ripple of muscle, all arrogant unconcern and aloof grace. She felt fucking _radioactive_.

"Now you mention it, I've got my eye on that guy with the ponytail two rows up, and maybe the blonde chick in the black jeans in front of him. Thought maybe I'd see about a quick ride before we land." Faith licked the corners of her sharp grin. "Yeah, probably her. Thought I'd had enough fish to do me for a while back in prison. Meant to go for more beef, get me a balanced diet an' all. You know how it is."

Xander's mouth was a hard, sealed line, and this was sure a hell of a lot better than reading the in-flight magazine. Plus, he'd _so_ asked for it.

"But _damn_. For _that_?" she continued, jerking her chin toward the blonde. "I make an exception. Even considering that the last pretty girl I picked up outside the big house turned out to be an evil lawyer."

"Some things never change," he gritted between his teeth at her.

She winked at him. "Wow, it's good to know I've got you to watch my back at this party, Harris."

Xander's jaw clenched hard a few times. "_Yeah_," he said finally, all iron and intensity. "Our personal baggage aside? You _do_. As long as you're fighting on my side, I'll cover you all the way. I don't have to get along with you to die for you. That's how things work over here on the light side of the force."

Faith's wicked smirk withered and fell off of her face. No _way_ was she saying thanks for that, and why did she even feel like she should? Crap. She turned away uncomfortably, fidgeting with the fold-out tray on the seat back in front of her.

"Yeah, okay," she said quietly, after a minute. "I get that." She shot him a sidelong glance. "Truce?"

"Truce." He sighed and bobbed his head at her in agreement. "I just hope that isn't a sign of the apocalypse or something."

And of _course_ that's when a bright light sheared through the plane lengthwise, gutting it into two halves which fell screaming through the burning-bright night sky. Which, really? Faith thought she totally should have seen coming.


End file.
